High packet loss with 15 megabit conn

Hi all. I'm a little confused, maybe someone can help me track down my problem.

I have a 15 Mb connection into my home. I regularly stream files up and down at a rate of 1.5MB/sec plus. (Yes, over one and a half megaBYTES per second.) However...

It seems to me that SL just loads areas slow as tar. So, I raised my bandwidth up to 1500 kilobits. Keep in mind that this is 1/10th of what my internet connection is capable of handling. At this rate, I experience packet loss up to ~30% and higher. I've already setup my router for port forwarding (all SL associated ports) and have been around and around trying different things. I'm hoping someone can shed some light as to why this is happening, and if anyone has any suggestions. I've tried bringing the bandwidth back down to ~300, and it seems to help alleviate the packet loss, but (of course) the environment loading time is still pitiful.

Any suggestions? Can the SL servers not keep up the big a stream? Am I overlooking something painfully obvious? Any help appreciated!

*EDIT*
System specs:
Core 2 Duo @ 2800
2GB RAM / dual channel
Nvidia 8800GT/512
"Program Files" on dual WD 80 gig in striped array
Routing through Linksys WRT54GL w/Tomato v1.07, all SL ports forwarded as per their requirements.

I also have a 15 megabit fiber optic line, and SL is often slow as butt. The fast connection is great for downloading client updates (takes me about 5 seconds to download the SL viewer), but Second Life actually throttles bandwidth usage per resident to ensure everyone gets equivalent performance. You can adjust this in the network preferences (but it won't let you go anywhere near your 15 megabit max). Additionally, it's not just the speed of the connection that matters, but in SL it's the way the data is obtained. When you teleport into a sim, you're hit with a flood of streamed data of all sorts from different sources; some comes from the sim, some comes from the asset server- every object that rezzes for you results in an asset server lookup and several separate downloads to your client. So you're dealing with the link from your house to the SL network, plus whatever's happening on the back-end (for example, the sim you're in could be in Texas, but it's pulling data from asset servers in California), and hoping that SL's internal networks aren't saturated, which does happen sometimes.

I've also had packet loss issues, as evidenced in the connection stats, but this happens intermittently... I've never been able to point to a problem on my end as the cause, so I'm happy blaming the grid.

EDIT: I will also note that sometimes adjusting the network bandwidth slider in SL DOWN will actually IMPROVE your performance and cut your packet loss. It's worth a try if you're having noticeable problems.

Oh... also, go to one of those internet speed test sites and make sure your connection is indeed as fast as it should be. Our connection was amazing when we first got it, then suddendly degraded for a few weeks (down to like 4 megabits), but it's all better now for some reason.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I've kinda resigned to just leaving the setting lower. I do have the full speed, as I speedtest it regularly. (lol Gotta keep tabs on the ISP.) For now I think I'll just leave it around ~900 (seems to be the sweet spot, since it rarely gets up to 1500kbps anyway, and has acceptable loss) and call it good.

< Uses a 155mbit and 14mbit depending on where i am, and theres no diffrence in SL, blame SL we all do especially asset wich seems to fail to notice youre requesting to download/update alot of the time.

It is known that too much of a good thing, sometimes can work against you.

Just because you can download/upload a stream at high rates, doesn't work the same with packet traffic in a platform that has multiple users.

Each action/interaction, requires a series of packets to go to the servers, be confirmed and the results, sent back in the correct order. Latency is sometimes caused by packets streaming in to a node, and it sits in a cashe awaiting action, if it stays there too long, it times out and degrades and has to be sent again.

As nodes work on a first come, first served basis, having a huge pipeline, won't make it work any faster for you. The weakest link in the chain, is the internet itself.

If you are using Vista (32 or 64bit), download and install the SP1 now released. Much of the updates include network discovery, QOS and flow corrections. At least you will know it's not your router/OS. BTW, you should not have to open any ports for SL to work, unless you are on a Proxy server, doing so, makes your system vulnerable to attacks. In windows platforms, just make sure you have SecondLife.exe and SLVoice.exe checked in exceptions of the firewall settings. Check that you have the latest BIOS updates for your router/modem. There have been upgrades for the internet protocols recently.